What is blast mode?
Blast mode allows you to send the first script in your text campaign to every contact with the click of a button. Instead of clicking to send each text manually, the texts will go out automatically, freeing you up to do what matters most: building power and winning elections.
With blast sending, you also have the ability to send just a portion of your initial texts for testing purposes, or schedule your initial texts to be sent at a later time.
Note: This feature does not automate sending replies. To send additional texts in a campaign, texters must either select a pre-scripted response and send it manually, or type in a response and send that.
To speed up the process of identifying conversations in need of a reply, you can share a link that gives texters batches of conversations in need of reply (we call this the “dynamic assignment for replies” link). You can read more about this feature here.
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Building a blast text campaign
Once the blast feature is turned for a team, all new campaigns on that team will be blast-enabled. Note that campaigns created prior to enabling blast won’t have blast capabilities, however, even if those campaigns hadn’t been launched.
Minimal requirements for a blast campaign
Building a text campaign for blast is nearly identical to building a campaign in non-blast Spoke. You can find a full set of instructions on building Spoke campaigns here.
At minimum, campaigns require a name and description, a contact list (either from a CSV file, or synced from VAN, or from a second pass), and an initial script to send to those contacts.
View of the campaign creation page for a blast campaign.
Differences between blast and non-blast campaigns
Blast campaigns differ from non-blast campaigns in the following ways:
No need to assign initial messages. Since you don’t need texters to send out the first messages of your campaign, there’s no need for features to assign the initial messages in a campaign to texters. Blast campaigns have no “Texters” panel. “Reply Management” (called “Assignment Management” in non-blast campaigns) does not include the dynamic link to assign initial messages.
The reply link is always on by default. Because texters are not sending out the texts, any replies you receive from contacts are not landing on a specific texter’s account by default. To move conversations easily onto a texter’s account, we’ve turned on a link to automatically assign out conversations in need of response. Simply share that link with your team to give them access to campaign replies.
No {texteraliasorfirstname} field. Because there is no texter sending out the initial messages in your campaign, the {texteraliasorfirstname} field in scripts is not available in blast campaigns. If you want to add the name of a texter to your scripts, simply type it into your script directly.
Other than these minor differences, building a campaign in Spoke is unchanged.
Why is there no texter name field?
When scripting your messages on blast campaigns, {texteraliasorfirstname}, the dynamic field that populates the first name of your texter, will not be available. This is because there is no texter sending your initial messages.
If you try and include this field into your script manually, it will appear in red/orange in your script box. This is to let you know that it will not populate with a texter’s name.
View of the invalid {texterAliasOrFirstName} field in a blast enabled campaign.
Spoke will prevent you from launching text campaigns with the {texterAliasOrFirstName} field.
View of the error you’ll receive if you include {texteraliasorfirstname} in a blast enabled campaign.
If you see this error, simply replace the {texterAliasOrFirstName} field with the name of your organization or with a static name, like “Hi {firstname}, this is John volunteering with” (instead of “Hi {firstname}, this is {texteraliasorfirstname} volunteering with….”).
Note, if you include a static name, each of your initial messages will be sent with that name included in your script.
Sending a blast text campaign
To get sending, click “Start this Campaign”.
Click “Start this campaign” to be taken to the sending page.
After the campaign has started, you will be redirected to the campaign’s sending and results page.
View of the stats and sending page with blast enabled
There are three ways to start sending a text campaign with our blast feature, Send All, Send A Portion, and Schedule Send. You can select between these methods by clicking on one of the green buttons.
After clicking a button, a confirmation window will pop up with the script of the text you are about to send and other details about your campaign, like your contact list size, the type of phone number you’re using to send the messages, and the texting hours for the campaign. This gives you a chance to confirm you want the messages to go out via these means before you start the send.
Send All
To immediately begin sending all of your messages, click the “Send All” button. Confirm your script and settings are correct in the confirmation module, then hit the green “Send” button, and the campaign will begin sending all of your initial texts.
View of the Send All confirmation page
Send A Portion
Send a Portion allows you to send a specific number of texts from your list. Once that portion is sent, the campaign will automatically pause further sending.
This feature was built for testing the efficacy of your scripts. We have seen organizations target a portion of their list while using our script variant feature to send an A/B test that helps identify the best performing script.
In this scenario, after sending a portion, you can determine which script to send to the remainder of the list (or you can send to an additional portion, or schedule the remaining send for later) by deleting the less effective variants in the campaign’s Script section.
Another way you could use this feature: if your campaign has a large contact list and you expect high engagement with your messages, you could just target portions of your list at a time to help your team keep up with replies in a timely manner.
View of the Send Portion confirmation page
Schedule Send
Schedule Send allows you to build a campaign ahead of time, and schedule the send to begin at a specific date and time anywhere up to two weeks later.
After you click Schedule Send, you’ll schedule the send date and time. The available times to schedule will appear in 15 minute increments. The time zone is automatically set to the campaign’s default time zone. You can schedule a text campaign two weeks in advance.
View of the schedule send module
Once you set a date and time and select “schedule send”, the campaign will automatically begin sending at the time you scheduled.
View of the sending screen after you have scheduled your send.
Pausing
You are able to pause an in-progress campaign at any time by clicking the pause button. Note, it can take up to two minutes for a blast enabled campaign to pause.
View of the pause button on a campaign that has begun sending.
After pausing a campaign, Spoke will provide a report of how many messages were sent before pausing, and how many remain to be sent in the campaign.
View of the sending screen after pausing.
Reply Management
Reminder: Even though those initial messages can be sent via blast, replies still need to be handled by humans!
The Reply Management section of your sending/results page helps you manage this process. It shows you the total number of contacts that need a reply, and gives you access to a dynamic link that you can share with texters to automatically assign out batches of replies in need of response.
View of the Reply Management section on the sending page.
To change the batch size, i.e. the amount of replies a texter receives at a time, click “Edit” on your campaign and open the “Reply Management” section to edit that batch size.
View of the Reply Management section on the campaign edit/creation page.
Note: texters need to have joined your account in order to access replies, or you need to turn on the setting to let folks create accounts by clicking your dynamic link on the “Settings” page. You can read more about this feature here.
In addition, you can always manage your replies from the Message Review page, where you can view all conversations in campaigns you’ve started, and move or release conversations to and from texter accounts. Read more about Message Review here.
Sending Speeds
The default sending speed for SMS on blast is 2000 messages a minute - 120,000 texts an hour.
The default sending speed for MMS on blast is 500 messages/minute - 30,000 texts an hour.
If your campaign/organization is interested in faster sending speeds because your volume of texts requires it, please reach out to us at support@scaletowin.com
To ensure our system is “warmed up” and that your campaign isn’t experiencing significant deliverability issues, we’ve created a sending “ramp”.
When your blast send begins, the messages will be batched into groups that are sent successively. The first batch of messages sent will be small, and then the next few batch sizes will each increase in size until the text campaign reaches the top sending speed of 2000 a minute for SMS and 500 a minute for MMS.
You can view the size of each ramped batch while your campaign is sending.
View your batch sizes during the sending ramp.
Errors & Auto-Pausing
Deliverability is important to us, and we know it’s important to you! That’s why we’ve built in an auto-pause feature to stop sending texts if a high percentage of your texts are being filtered or are experiencing other types of message failures.
View of a blast send campaign that was autopaused due to a high error rate.
If your campaign does get auto-paused due to a high error rate, you will see a notification on the campaign, and the individual who created the campaign will get an email alerting them about the paused campaign.
Here are some best practices to keep in mind when writing your scripts. This is a good resource to come back to if your messages are getting filtered and auto-paused.
Please reach out to us at support@scaletowin.com if you’re experiencing auto-pausing and you’d like assistance addressing it.
FAQ
Does blast change pricing?
No. Pricing is the same for blast sending as for classic peer-to-peer texting.
Does blast automatically send responses?
Blast sending allows you to send out the first script in your campaign with the click of a button. Any subsequent scripts you want to send in the campaign will need to be sent out manually, either by selecting a scripted reply and sending it out, or by typing up a reply and hitting send.